Chad and Roxanne's family was in charge of the Morwood reunion this year. The reunion was held over the 24th of July at their property on Cove Mountain. This mountain is in between Richfield and Koosharem. The reunion was a lot of fun and we enjoyed seeing everyone and the kids loved finding new cousins to play with.
We arrived on the mountain Wednesday, July 23. It seemed to take forever to get settled into a place to camp. First we had to find a place level enough for the trailer. This was difficult because everything was on a hill. At one point in the leveling process of rising and lowering the trailer, our trailer jack broke! Yes we were stuck we could not raise the trailer off the truck because the jack would not work. This caused somewhat of a problem... and a little stress... oh and it was dark outside.... Finally after Russell had cooled off and thought of a solution, we were able to find a more level spot, use our 2-ton jack to raise the trailer off the truck hitch and use logs and other boards to prop it up so that it would sit level off the jack. Thanks Terral for feeding my kids (and us).
Thursday, July 24th was when the rest of the family came. We had a pretty relaxed day of visiting with relatives, and playing with cousins. That afternoon Colby wanted to go fishing so we did. We drove a couple miles down the road to Big Lake. While we drove, we listened to our new "favorite" songs, "It's Raining Tacos" and "Tony Chestnut." (Thank you Hughes!). We had a great time fishing and not catching.
The kids got a little bored holding their poles so they made up their own fun by throwing rocks:
Jumping off rocks. Logan even decided to swimming:
I think this kid was meant to be a fish because anything wet or water just calls his name. I told him to stay out of the water so what does he do? He goes as close to the edge as he can and then when he thought I wasn't looking, he stepped right in the lake. When I went to get him out, he sat down right in the water and mud. Well there was nothing I could do about that so I just took him out of the water and let him play. As you can see, he was covered in mud pretty quick. But he was happy...
Russell decided to wade out into the water too to see if he could get a better angle on the fishing. Well rather than catching a fish, Russell got splashed by a bunch of rocks. As soon as he got out in the water, the kids started throwing rocks at his feet trying to splash him. Jacee and Chrislyn were successful.
And as a result, Jacee got the brunt of it. She lost her hat in the water and was scared that Russell was going to drop her in the water too. It was so funny. After that, Emily and Colby wanted to go out in the water too so Russell took them out on a big rock in the lake.
They loved it and thought they were so cool.
The next day, Friday July 25th, was a four wheeling day. That morning I ran 2.5 miles along the four wheeling trails. It was such a nice run through the mountains and meadows with the deer but the altitude killed me. I am used to St. George running so when you add 8,000 feet well lets just say it was a little hard to breath. That afternoon, we all went on a big four-wheeler ride through the mountains. The ride was awesome until it started raining. Yeah it was sunny the whole time we were camping except for the couple hours we were out on the four wheeler!
Well our four-wheeler had a little bit of a hard time with the altitude too. We were driving along fine until we tried to go up this big hill. Then the four wheeler just started bogging down and finally quit. We finally got it running again but we were worried we would have to walk home. I guess we should get that looked at before we go riding again. Well when we got to the top of the hill, we were at this amazing look out point:
We could see the whole valley of Richfield, Monroe, Joseph and Annabelle. It was cool and I love the patchwork quilt look of the area. Emily is not in the picture with us because she was riding with Tami and they had gone back to camp while we were trying to get the four wheeler to work. Emily had fun playing checkers with Jess and Cole back at camp.
We continued our ride to Deep Lake. We put Colby on with Lacie to take some weight off the four wheeler to get it up the hill and then he did not want to get back on with us. Here Colby and Lacie are going down a really steep hill at Deep Lake. Colby thought he was so cool!
After the ride, we came back to camp and made Camp Doughnuts. These thing are the best doughnuts ever, well except maybe Krispy Kreme but close.
Colby said he was guarding the doughnuts but I think his real scheme was to steal tastes when no one was looking. Here I caught both Colby and Grandpa sneaking a doughnut before dinner! Caught Ya!
Tami also made homemade ice cream and we each took turns cranking the ice cream maker. Logan loved turning the crank. He and Cole were the only ones that wanted to crank the handle it seemed like. They had fun.
Cole and Logan became even better friends on this camping trip. I think they loved having some one their size to play with. Here they are holding hands while walking through the camp. It was so cute!
Look at these cute knot heads! They are really good friends but they both are very spoiled! They like to fight over toys because one kid wants the toy but the other kid saw it first and they cannot share so they play tug o' war while squawking at each other. It is really quite funny but probably shouldn't laugh. For the most part though these two are good friends.
Saturday, July 26 was the big family dinner. It was nice to get together with the entire family for a dinner. There were about 100 plus people at the reunion this year. I was glad we were able to go and see everyone. After dinner we headed home so we could be home for church the next day. On our way to the truck, we passed Chad's loader and grader. Colby loves big trucks so he wanted his picture taken inside the loader bucket.
When Colby got in the bucket, he said "Look Mom, we are dirt!" It was so funny and as you can see, after camping all weekend, they looked like dirt too! Logan loved playing in the bucket too and was so mad when we had to leave.
Coming up the mountain was hard because the road was steep but going down the mountain was even more difficult. The road down was very steep and windy. Even in the lowest gear it seemed like Russell had to ride the brakes a lot. I was glad I was not driving.
On the way down, Russell and I were on the look out for a special tree. The last time we were up on Cove Mountain was 8 years ago right before we got married. During that camping trip we carved our names in a tree to be there for all time. We were looking for that tree and guess what? We found it!
There you have it: R.F. + T.F. '06. We were so happy we found this tree. It was so cool to see it after so many years. Russell and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this year. It is so nice to have my best friend with me through all of the thick and thin things, helping me and loving me along the way. Happy Anniversary Russell. I love you!
Well that was our fun family reunion. We got home at midnight, in bed by one, and then back up for church meetings at five. Needless to say I am exhausted. But it was fun. Oh and good news, Russell and my dad were able to fix our trailer jack and our trailer brakes so they work great now. Yeah!